You've Always Counted
by Trixie-Baggins
Summary: {I wanna hide the truth / I wanna shelter you / But with the beast inside / There's nowhere we can hide / When you feel my heat / Look into my eyes / It's where my demons hide / Don't get too close / It's dark inside/ It's where my demons hide} A look into the love between James Moriarty and Molly Hooper. Based loosely on the lyerics of "Demons" by Imagine Dragons


There's a fine line between love and hate. At least that's what the poets and songwriters claimed. But if it was true, no one knew it more than James Moriarty. He loved the thrill of tracking down a new enemy, but hated that the adventure ended when they were caught. He loved the puzzle of trying to understand someone's mind, but hated when they unraveled completely. He loved to start projects but hated when the boredom overtook him and he abandoned them unfinished.

It's what first drew his attention to the medical examiner Moly Hooper. She was brilliant and curious, but also satisfied by whatever information Jim gave her. She was close to his latest obsession, Sherlock Holmes, but he didn't know who she was which gave her the advantage. And on top of all that, she was so starved for attention and love he could give her the first and fake the second and she would be putty in his hands. Merely clay waiting for him to come and shape her. It seemed like the perfect plan and it was, truly, except James Moriarty did the one thing that no one should ever do if they want to win. He underestimated his opponent. He underestimated his ally.

You always want what you can't have. It was true in Molly's case. She was attracted to and fascinated by him. The more he pushed her away, the more she wanted him to care for her. She wanted to be the person who got under the detective's armor; the exception to his rule of not caring. It was just little things- bringing him coffee, working overtime when he had a case, neatly wrapping his Christmas gift- but nothing she did seemed to make any difference. If anything, it just brought more ridicule from Sherlock Holmes.

When "Jim from IT" stepped in, Molly was so emotionally damaged she couldn't see how her boyfriend was manipulating her. It was too easy the way Jim would work what he needed to know into a conversation over dinner or during a film. At first Molly went along with it, but Jim, like Sherlock, didn't give her enough credit. He knew she was brilliant- after all, of all the MEs, why would Sherlock choose her?- but he didn't know just how brilliant she actually was.

The redhead started to do what any true genius would- put two and two together. At first it was little things- a suspicious character hanging around their flat; Jim wanting her to show murder victims to people she'd never seen before. It slowly acclimated to phone calls in the middle of the night, and then meetings. Eventually the bodies started to show up. Every morning, without fail, after Jim had one of his 'meetings'. It got so bad that Molly enlisted Sherlock's help to get to the bottom of Jim's actual activities. Every time there was a new victim after James left in the middle of the night, Sherlock would come to the morgue and look at them. Unfortunately there wasn't enough evidence to put the murders the together, and a jury wouldn't convict someone on the hunch of two geniuses. One day Sherlock took Miss Hooper out to lunch and told her what he had figured out, but could not prove about Jim, and Molly had to face the truth about her boyfriend.

James had assumed that she would disregard his crimes because she cared for him, but then again he underestimated her. When Molly confronted him, he did not deny it, but made a better attempt to hide his crimes. Not because he didn't love Molly, but for the exact opposite reason- he couldn't lose her. When she did eventually turn him over to Scotland Yard, he felt betrayed. If she was what she had started out as- merely a pawn in his game- then he should not have felt betrayed, but he did. Betrayed and hurt. It meant what he had been scared of all along- he cared for her, he loved her. He was _in love_ with her.

When he hacked the television sets of the jury during his trial, he didn't want to get out and keep causing havoc. All he could think about was getting back to his beloved Molly. When he created Richard Brook, all he wanted was for her to think he was a good guy and a victim. He didn't even need that, he just wanted her to love him again. To love him with an unconditional, unquestioning love.

Alas, fate had a different plan for both of them. The Richard Brook alias wouldn't fool someone as genius as Molly Hooper, someone who had spent a year studying in Germany, someone who understood the significance the name had to both James Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes.

The first time Jim knew he had lost, truly lost, Molly was when he discovered she was helping Sherlock. The psychopath had tried to clean up his act, legitimately this time. No more pretending that he wasn't breaking the law anymore, but actually not breaking the law anymore. Which was hard. Telling the Napoleon of Crime to stop breaking the law was like telling DaVinci to stop painting. You can scream it has much as you want, but it still won't do you any good. He was willing to do what he needed to win her back, and he did his best, but sometimes being willing doesn't matter, and one's best just isn't good enough.

If he couldn't be with her, to have her as his very own, Jim knew that his second and only other option was to protect her. He knew that Mycroft would take care of his little brother, but it was only a matter of time before Moriarty snapped and hurt the only person he cared about. A person that Mycroft wouldn't care about because Sherlock didn't care about her. So he started to plan, and he began a game. A game everyone took part in whether they knew it or not. The last thought that crossed James' mind before he took his own life was that Molly was safe.

They say that eyes are the windows to the soul. If someone bothered to look through Jim's, all they would find is black. In the middle, though, there would be a tiny speck of light. But it would be big enough. Big enough to show that he loved someone, and that he died for her. Big enough to make his heinous crimes more heinous. Big enough to show his spontaneous acts: flowers on her desk, jewelry on her bedside table, for what they were- acts of love. For no matter what he said, or what she thought, he did love her.

Sherlock Holmes, the consulting sociopath didn't know much when it came to love and human emotion, but he did know that. He did know that James Moriarty was in love with Molly Hooper. _His_ Molly Hooper. He looked at the ginger and said matter-of-factly, as if giving a cause of death, "You're wrong you know. You do count. You've always counted."

_To me. To him._ Is what he added silently.


End file.
